An Utterly Self-Indulgent Moment of Whining

How do you cope with having a colleague who has been crowned the official poster-boy for Research Super-Geniusness when you can’t get anybody to pay attention to your work at all?

More particularly, how do you cope with this situation when you actually really like the guy involved? When he has the unmitigated gall to be nice?

This is a guy who not only got his first book published by a super-top-notch press right out of the gate, but also won one of the highest awards that one can win for such a book. Who not only received super-fabulous fellowships during graduate school, but has since then received every high-end fellowship there is to get. Who not only received such more than sufficient fellowship funding that he was able to extend his junior leave year to a year-and-a-half, but has also just received — and I kid you not — every fellowship he applied for for next year, such that he’ll be taking a year and a half once again.

While someone else, not to be mentioned, was turned down for every goddamned thing she applied for, both external and fucking internal as well, and who now has to content herself with not only reducing her year’s leave next year to a half a year, but a half a year at 80 fucking percent of her salary, at that.

I’m supposed to be teaching right now, but I have them doing small group work, because I’m afraid that if I open my mouth I’m going to scream, or burst into tears, or something else equally unseemly.

Some of the difference is the problem of the contemporary — major fellowship funds don’t like supporting research that seems insufficiently historical — but some of it is clearly me. I’m not doing something right. And I don’t know what it is. And, at the moment, I just want to quit.

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One thought on “An Utterly Self-Indulgent Moment of Whining”

For what it’s worth (and maybe it’s worth absolutely nothing), I took classes with both you and the aforementioned poster-boy, and I thought the two of you were equally inspiring / daunting / brilliant / etc.

Besides, I’m guessing poster-boy would pass out at around mile thirteen.